December 16, 2008

... Cavett's piece on Sarah Palin was insufferably supercilious. With dripping disdain, he sniffed at her "frayed syntax, bungled grammar and run-on sentences." He called her "the serial syntax-killer from Wasilla High," "one who seems to have no first language."...

How can it be that so many highly educated Americans have so little historical and cultural consciousness that they identify their own native patois as an eternal mark of intelligence, talent and political aptitude?

In sonorous real life, Cavett's slow, measured, self-interrupting and clause-ridden syntax is 50 years out of date. Guess what: There has been a revolution in English -- registered in the 1950s in the street slang, colloquial locutions and assertive rhythms of both Beat poetry and rock 'n' roll and now spread far and wide on the Web in the standard jazziness of blogspeak. Does Cavett really mean to offer himself as a linguistic gatekeeper for political achievers in this country?

Ha ha. Really. (I say in blogspeak, proving Cavett's a dick.)

I am very sorry that he, and so many other members of the educational elite, cannot take pleasure as I do in the quick, sometimes jagged, but always exuberant way that Palin speaks -- which is closer to street rapping than to the smug bourgeois cadences of the affluent professional class.

Dick says:

Some of what Ms. P. says is so dumb that I assumed, at first, that it was meant to be funny. But I think I’m wrong. It would be strange of her — considering the number of arrows already in her daunting intellectual quiver — to suddenly attempt humor.

That's very old-fashioned humor, you know, Dick. The street rappers of today would never put it like that.

Many years ago Cavett had his own daily show. I wanted to like him because he was funny, low-key and self-effacing. The more I watched I saw that he was just as you describe him.

One day he had Freeman Dyson as a guest. Cavett was spouting a steady stream of politically correct bullshit that he thought would play well with Dyson. To my great satisfaction, Dyson disagreed with everything he said.

There's an art to language, whether it's Cavet's version or Camilla's featured street rapping. That's what's important in the discussion. If there's an art to Palin's style, I haven't heard it yet. So with that, I'd venture on that Camilla's either smitten or slumming.

That Cavett article ranks right up there with Letterman and Katie Couric getting together after the election and kicking Palin one more time, just for good measure.

What in the world is in the hearts of these people, with their need to humiliate Palin over and over again... when their guy already won? Cavett's article offered nothing new. All he did was regurgitate what democrats had been saying about Palin ever since her popularity soared.

And SteveR really nailed it. The media and the democrat's willful ignorance of Joe Biden's sheer idiocy is beyond dishonest.

And yet they still reserve the right to feel superior. I'm starting to think that's the most highly prized value for democrats these days.

By the way, I made it to the (latter) part of Cavett's column to which you were referring, Althouse, by sheer will alone. Jeez, that column is godawful, and way before the response-to-Paglia bit. Cavett was a very talented interviewer and so forth, but his print stuff, at least in latter days, is just... painful, never mind the content.

I remember reading the original Dick Cavett piece and finding it, in his words "so dumb that I assumed, at first, that it was meant to be funny."

Dick Cavett starts with the pseudo-intellectual's sin of conflating glibness with intelligence. He supports his foregone conclusions with the timeworn trick of attacking the grammar of minimially punctuated transcripts.

One of Dick Cavett's examples of Palin's poor syntax is this:

"never, ever did I talk about, well, gee, is it a country or a continent, I just don’t know about this issue."

Can you spot the missing punctuation? How about this:

"never, ever did I talk about: 'well, gee, is it a country or a continent, I just don’t know about this issue.'"

Here Palin uses a colloquialism ("talk about" instead of "say") and clearly switches into a sarcastic voice to deliver a joke. It's an expressive, theatrical, way of speaking.

Sure it doesn't transcribe well, but I don't think she was talking to a dictaphone, Dick.

I happily admit that Palin was pretty garbled and nonsensical in some of her interviews, but I refuse to draw conclusions about intelligence based on public speaking ability. Because, unlike Dick Cavett, I'm not an idiot.

It's a tell, you see. No matter how much education and poseur language a person hides behind, you can tell who's utterly incapable of independent thought, sadly bereft of anything that could be called intelligence, by whether they think Sarah Palin is stupid. Much like the past eight years when you knew you were talking to someone truly deeply stupid if they made a joke about how stupid Bush is.

He is, or was, an entertainer. He made his bones as a comedy writer. Maybe Paglia meant educated rather than educational, but even then she would be stretching it. What Cavett has is an attitude. He deserves the term educational as much as I do...not.

Back in the late '80s and early '90s when Howard Stern was funny he would call Dick Cavett on the phone as a regular guest.

Stern would listen to Cavett's godawful boring stories and then talk over them with his crew without Cavett hearing him.

Then they would hang up on him and call back and say they were accidentally cut off.

"Are you depressed," Stern recently asked guest Dick Cavett, who has made public his battles with manic-depression, "because you have to go around explaining to people why all your shows are failures?" (This was shortly before Stern went to a commercial break by announcing, "When we come back, we'll get Dick to talk about his days as a mental patient.")

"I'm gonna do something that no one else has been able to do," Stern brayed early in his session with Cavett, "which is to make Dick Cavett interesting." And darned if he wasn't right: Cavett withstood Stern's ceaseless gibes with a cheerful, fixed grin and was slowly, surely revealed not as the erudite smoothie he has always asserted, but as a shameless publicity hound, willing to be abused by Stern if it enabled him to spend another 30 minutes of his life in front of a TV camera.

OT: Are straight people allowed to use the word "homage" around gay people? I mean, wouldn't that sort of be like white people using the word "niggardly" around black people? Never thought about it before, but you can't too careful. What do you think, Titus et al?/OT

Hey if you believe in abortion on demand, confiscatory tax rates, and welfare for all, you can believe in the Tooth Fairy and that moon is made of cheese and you're an intellectual giant in the liberal world.

I guess I don't get it. What is wrong with the extemporaneous way in which Palin speaks? She uses colloquialisms and run on sentences. So what? Who doesn't.

Well, maybe someone as snarky and snide as Dick Cavett doesn't. He seems to be be very taken with the presumption of his on intelligence, but rarely do normal people speak with precise grammar or syntax. What a snob.

People rarely speak the way that they write. You speak to your audience and you speak to communicate ideas. Transcribing a person's verbal statements never sounds as good on "paper" as it does in the spoken format. Just look at Obama. If we transcribe every uh, um, humana humana and circumlocution in any of his non-scripted speeches....he sounds like an idiot.

My business is very much a sales position. I can use technical terms to describe market movements, stocks and economic concepts that make me look smart...OR....I can communicate with my clients by using common analogies and humor that will not make my clients and prospects feel stupid. Do I want to look real smart like Dick Cavett, or do I want to make the sale and get the relationship with my client?

I think part of the genius of comedic depressives like the late Rodney Dangerfield (and less so, Dick Cavett) is in their abilities to express their loserness and its universality but at the same time not make their audiences as depressed as they are. I think it requires aiming any and all meanness toward one's self. When Cavett has been able to do that, he's been truly funny.

Those edumacated big city folk don't. Not like us poor hicks in flyover Jesus Country.

That's right. We don't.

Dust Bunny Queen's comment is, I think, revealing on this subject. I agree that it makes good sense to use colloquialisms and common analogies to communicate with common people. Using audience-appropriate language demonstrates adaptability, which is a mark of intelligence. That's why one wouldn't "use technical terms to describe market movements, stocks and economic concepts that make [one] look smart" in a conversation with a layperson on those subjects.

One would, however, "use technical terms to describe market movements, stocks and economic concepts that make [one] look smart" in a conversation with a person who is familiar with those subjects. That's what's key here. It's fine for Sarah Palin to speak the way she does when she's addressing throngs of people in middle America. But when she's sitting around a table with intelligent, articulate, educated people, she needs to be able to elevate her language to their level. She needs to be able to speak precisely, not sloppily. I am convinced that she cannot. And that's my problem with her. She should stay in Alaska, where she's not so thoroughly unimpressive.

But when she's sitting around a table with intelligent, articulate, educated people, she needs to be able to elevate her language to their level. She needs to be able to speak precisely, not sloppily. I am convinced that she cannot.

Yes and no. The "tables" that Palin had been sitting around were basically formats for her to reach more of the American public through media interviews.

Personally, I would be very put off by a chameleon act in her speaking one way in one format and in a completely different manner in another. This is one of the main reasons that I am firmly convinced that Obama is a deceptive empty suit and a sock puppet.

In one format, the so called debates, he comes off scholarly, clipped in accent and very pedantic. In other venues, we hear him with a fake folksy, black church accent and cadence....droppin' his 'g's and drawling his way through the speech. (Almost as bad as Hillary) In another, he is a stand up comedian with yet another accent. Which is it? Who is the real Obama??

I don't think that the likes of Chuckie Gibson and Katie Couric rise to the level of, oh how did you put it, intelligent, articulate, educated people.

I don't think they do either. I was referring to a situation where she's confronted with a complex problem, like the current economic situation, and doesn't have the intellectual capacity to understand it, let alone talk about it in a coherent, productive way. There are already enough idiots in Washington. Let's not add one more. She's not smart enough to be President. Deal with it and move on.

I don't think they do either. I was referring to a situation where she's confronted with a complex problem, like the current economic situation, and doesn't have the intellectual capacity to understand it, let alone talk about it in a coherent, productive way.

I see. Please remind me where Biden articulated his intellectual capacity to deal with the economy.

Oh never mind I remember. His plan was to do what FDR did. Get on television and explain it to the folks.

I will never ceased to amazed at those who think Palin was too dumb to be a VP yet have no problem with Joe Biden in the passenger seat.

People on the right get called "wingers" if we question Barack's positions and the politics of hi friends (i.e. anti-white bigots, unrepentant communist terrorists, biggest crooks in Illinois government history, which is motherfucking saying something).

People on the Left are sophisticated and nuanced for snarking on Palin's accent and using it as prima facie evidence that she rides the short-bus.

I'll never understand that, but then I'll never understand the reverence for history's parade of the worst mass-murderers while calling the Iraq war a crime against humanity. The Left is a disease and a crime against humanity. It needs to be expunged.

I don't have any trouble understanding Palin because her accent, sentence structure, and patois is what I grew up hearing. (And speaking.) Curious thing is that I honestly believed that I had no accent... couldn't hear it until I moved away from home.

Take away her accent, also, and her speech really isn't any different than anyone else.

How can it be that so many highly educated Americans have so little historical and cultural consciousness that they identify their own native patois as an eternal mark of intelligence, talent and political aptitude?

I suffered the classic northerner's "anyone with a southern accent must be stupid" gut reaction, but I always knew it was irrational.

Personally, I would be very put off by a chameleon act in her speaking one way in one format and in a completely different manner in another.

She has done the same thing - take a look at her gubernatorial debates - she sounds pretty blandly midwestern. On the stump and in the interview, she dialed up the Fargo. Then back in Anchorage, after election night, she's back to the midwestern.

Seems to me Fargo is more Plains, but point taken. Fargo, as in the movie. Bland midwest, as in Milwaukee. Sorry, but you'll have to look up the clips, yourself. As a native south-Wisconsinite, the tonal variations aren't hard to pick up...

Well when Biden get's equal time in terms of coverage of his idiocy then perhaps your comment would hold some weight.

I completely agree with you that the media let Biden get away with way too much. Especially all of that "world will test Obama" business. They should have put his feet to the fire. You can see enough of Biden and Palin on YouTube, though, to conclude that both of them are blunderbusses.

Interesting. What does that say about Obama?

I'm not sure, and I'd like to hear what others think about this. I've never completely understood why Obama picked Biden. Should we impute Biden's idiocy to Obama? Did we impute Cheney's nefariousness to Bush? I don't think most of us did.

Authenticity does not a bright person make or a fit candidate. A person not know what the job entails that she is running for is not competent, no matter how she talks or how her ardent defender Paglia defends her.The snippy remarks about Biden and Dick's age are plain disgusting. We all age, no? Maybe even you, dear reader, sometime...

Paglia often surprises me. She has a loyalty to small-town America and its values, and sees something in that world that the blue state elite almost never see, busy as they are giving each other herpes between visits to the shrink.

I have no idea why Cavett thinks he is so superior to Palin.

I suppose everybody wants to feel superior to somebody else, but you're supposed to kind of get over that, or at least hide it, if you can, not trumpet it out in newspapers and TV shows all over the land.

I'm not sure, and I'd like to hear what others think about this. I've never completely understood why Obama picked Biden. Should we impute Biden's idiocy to Obama? Did we impute Cheney's nefariousness to Bush? I don't think most of us did.

4:09 PM

The fact that you think Dick Cheney is nefarious proves you are a partisan hack.

She has 4 kids. Doesn't seem to be there's much "waste" going on. I'm sure asked Todd would concur. Dennis Miller once commented that a lot of ire directed toward Palin seemed to stem from her obviously healthy sex life.

"It's fine for Sarah Palin to speak the way she does when she's addressing throngs of people in middle America. But when she's sitting around a table with intelligent, articulate, educated people, she needs to be able to elevate her language to their level."

Umm, no.

When there's a camera, the audience is not the other people sitting around the table -- it includes those throngs of people in Middle America. She apparently understands this.

Remember, how creating the "appearance of impropriety" by the press is what passed for incisive coverage. A whole lot of "scrambling" going on, but no where near Chi-town, according to ABC's Rhonda Schwartz.

"It's vetting gone haywire," said Gov. Sarah Palin's beleaguered press secretary, Bill McAllister, as he dealt with a new round of questions about the governor -- this time about a tanning bed installed in the governor's mansion in Juneau.

In the 2½ weeks since Palin was named to the GOP ticket, McAllister's phone has been ringing off the hook from national reporters who have descended on the state to look into the background of the governor.

Monday, US Weekly and a blog, NarcoNews, reported that "the former beauty queen's penchant for a bronzed body" led to the installation of a "private tanning bed" shortly after she took office.

"She paid for it herself," said McAllister from his Anchorage office. He told ABC News he had "no idea" why she had installed the machine but confirmed it was installed in the mansion.

An online search showed tanning beds for sale at a wide range of prices, starting at around $1,000 and going as high as $35,000. McAllister said he did not know what Palin had paid for her tanning bed.

Later in the day, McAllister was dealing with the continued fallout from a Alaska state legislative investigation into what has been called "troopergate."

The fact that you think Dick Cheney is nefarious proves you are a partisan hack.

Nope. Not a partisan hack. I've voted for Republicans and Democrats, and tend to fall right of center on everything except social issues. I'm not really wed to either party. I can look critically at both parties, an ability lacking in many of the commenters that hang out on this blog, liberal and conservative.

Empty statements like yours aren't helpful. It'd be just as easy for me to say that the fact that you don't think Dick Cheney is nefarious proves you are a partisan hack.

In a century of middle-class values, to witch even the queen subscribed, Wilde reaffirms aristocratic virtu, fabricating it out of its accumulated meanings in English literature. The Importance of Being Ernest is a reactionary political poem that makes aristocratic style the supreme embodiment of life as art.

Contempt for Sarah Palin is inversely proportional to respect for Susan Sontag.....I don't think someone like Susan Sontag would ever be able to function happily in the world. Her greatest creation was not herself but her ability to deptict her unhappiness as a principled objection to bourgeoise democracy. What drives liberals crazy about Sarah Palin is her happiness. She came from an unpriveliged background in an extreme climate and seems to have made a good life for herself.

Contempt for Sarah Palin is inversely proportional to respect for Susan Sontag.....I don't think someone like Susan Sontag would ever be able to function happily in the world. Her greatest creation was not herself but her ability to deptict her unhappiness as a principled objection to bourgeoise democracy. What drives liberals crazy about Sarah Palin is her happiness. She came from an unpriveliged background in an extreme climate and seems to have made a good life for herself.

7:01 PM

Which is why she and millions of others like her must be:

* demonized* destroyed* marginalized

Lest the other unhappy denizens get the "wrong" idea that it's ok to be happy.

No, that wasn't it. There were no vocals, it was all orchestral and was very grand and New Frontierish. It was when she was first announced as his VP. It played when she came out on the stage in Dayton Ohio for the first time with Mccain.

I also liked the music that Obama had after he gave his victory speech and his speech in Denver=it was the same music-it was very dramatic.

I notice the small things in life like that. I look at a tree and examine it's bark and analyze it and make assumptions about that particular tree.

Similar, when a new hog is unveiled to me. The initial presentation and arrival is so important-it can literally be make or break it for me. I examine it like an artist examines his art. I look at the color, lines, shape, head to shaft ratio, veins, etc.

I pick up a feather on the sidewalk. I appreciate that feather. Dream about where it came from. Tickle it under my chin. Perhaps dance with that feather. I may make a very dramatic gay pen out of that feather and write with it with so much gusto. I may tickle my ass with the pen feather if the moment arises. I so appreciate my surroundings.

Someone should do an analysis on Palin's nonverbal speech skills: her crowd wave, her wrinkled nose, her head nod. She is the real deal, much better than Obama. Biden has good NV's (nonverbals) and it's part of what make him likeable. McCain has the strangest NV grammar of all, he literally stammers with his body.

Palin's is top-notch, as good as it gets. And how important are NV's? Well, 65% of all communication is nonverbal. So that means the things you do with your body, your face, and the tag-ons with vocal expressions are twice as important as the words themselves.

One last thing. I recall the time some heckler interrupted Palin at a speech in Florida (I think). She turned to her left, rebuffed him with a line about her son serving in Iraq so that this a-hole had his right to heckle. It was an impressive, off-the-cuff verbal repartee, but it was her nonverbals that soared. She turned to him, lifted her voice just short of a schoolmarm, nodded her head at the completion, then clapped along with the crowd. If anyone could find this on the net, I'd be much obliged. It was a majestic display of communication skills.

Someone should do an analysis on Palin's nonverbal speech skills: her crowd wave, her wrinkled nose, her head nod. She is the real deal, much better than Obama. Biden has good NV's (nonverbals) and it's part of what make him likeable. McCain has the strangest NV grammar of all, he literally stammers with his body.

Palin's is top-notch, as good as it gets. And how important are NV's? Well, 65% of all communication is nonverbal. So that means the things you do with your body, your face, and the tag-ons with vocal expressions are twice as important as the words themselves.

One last thing. I recall the time some heckler interrupted Palin at a speech in Florida (I think). She turned to her left, rebuffed him with a line about her son serving in Iraq so that this a-hole had his right to heckle. It was an impressive, off-the-cuff verbal repartee, but it was her nonverbals that soared. She turned to him, lifted her voice just short of a schoolmarm, nodded her head at the completion, then clapped along with the crowd. If anyone could find this on the net, I'd be much obliged. It was a majestic display of communication skills.

Someone should do an analysis on Palin's nonverbal speech skills: her crowd wave, her wrinkled nose, her head nod. She is the real deal, much better than Obama. Biden has good NV's (nonverbals) and it's part of what make him likeable. McCain has the strangest NV grammar of all, he literally stammers with his body.

Palin's is top-notch, as good as it gets. And how important are NV's? Well, 65% of all communication is nonverbal. So that means the things you do with your body, your face, and the tag-ons with vocal expressions are twice as important as the words themselves.

One last thing. I recall the time some heckler interrupted Palin at a speech in Florida (I think). She turned to her left, rebuffed him with a line about her son serving in Iraq so that this a-hole had his right to heckle. It was an impressive, off-the-cuff verbal repartee, but it was her nonverbals that soared. She turned to him, lifted her voice just short of a schoolmarm, nodded her head at the completion, then clapped along with the crowd. If anyone could find this on the net, I'd be much obliged. It was a majestic display of communication skills.

Sometimes my chakras get fucked up though and I want to take Mister Skunk and put in him the Lexus of the 25 year old student who's parents paid for his loft in full.

When I see him I want to vomit. He gets a package almost everyday. He is bitchy to me. He is going to Tokyo, Chicago and Paris for the holidays. He went to Oxford. He has nice shoes outside his door. He is cute. When I say hello to him he looks the other way. I want to do something mean to his car or him.

I wonder what her numbers would have been if she had the media treatment as Obama did. I wonder what Obama's numbers would be if he had the media treatment that Palin did. Wouldn't that be interesting.

What in the world is in the hearts of these people, with their need to humiliate Palin over and over again

Even if one agreed with those who found her unqualified, it's hard to fathom why she's gotten so far under their skin that, week after the election, the showy expressions of disdain and contempt continue.

Although I can't quite believe this is true, could it be that intellectuals of Cavett's type are so insecure that they have to lord their IQ's, college degrees, SAT scores and other evidence of mental superiority over others? Forty years after graduation?

Maybe that's why I like Paglia so much. She is smart, learned and confident, so she can afford to be generous and curious. (Althouse, too.) Cavett's attack on Palin demonstrates his fearfulness.

I view Palin as having above-average intelligence, but not learned. The good news, someone like Palin can learn more. Cavett, highly educated but with average intelligence, has hit his ceiling.

Although I can't quite believe this is true, could it be that intellectuals of Cavett's type are so insecure that they have to lord their IQ's, college degrees, SAT scores and other evidence of mental superiority over others?

My introduction to Paglia was on the Dick Cavette show. She was a breath of fresh air. He wasn't. As far as the style of candidates go, I'm interested in content, not style. I side with Camille Paglia on this issue. I challenge pundits and commentators to analyze Sarah Palin on issues rather than style. It's more interesting that way, really it is.

My first exposure to Palin, just before she was announced as the GOP VP candidate, was her interview with Maria Bartiromo about Alaska's energy policy. I found Palin to be thoughtful and articulate. Those who say she can't discuss complex topics with intelligence have most likely not seen this particular interview, in which both women were interested in the topic, not upstaging each other or being snide.

Justin, you're a supercilious oaf. You wrote: "I was referring to a situation where she's confronted with a complex problem, like the current economic situation, and doesn't have the intellectual capacity to understand it, let alone talk about it in a coherent, productive way.... She's not smart enough to be President."

What "complex problem" has Obama ever solved? His ideas for dealing with the economy are rooted in a failed philosophy. Does he have the intellectual heft to realize it and innovate? I doubt it.

Sarah Palin has solved a complex issue that Alaska's governors for the past few decades have been unable to make any headway with. Consequently, we are having a trans-Canada gas pipeline. Moreover, when Russia's Gazprom made moves to bring Alaska under its umbrella, in some sort of Russian-Iran cartel, Palin headed them off. Consequently, we in the lower-49 will have cause to thank Palin's complex problem solving skills and her foresight when Russia and Iran begin to screw with the gas market.

The irony of your Palin comments, Justin, is that you are basing your assessment of Palin on two interviews with two morons rather than on her actual record—which the media made sure nobody found out about.

You likely have never heard Palin in an interview with someone who wasn't trying to screw her over and play gotcha "journalism." Such interviews are out there, and everyone who has seen them know that, of the four in the race, Palin was the best person for the POTUS. She's bright, creative, tireless, and has her head on straight.

Thanks to people like you, we have an empty suit who sounds intellectual but can't do jack to save his life. Heaven help us from intellectual giants like that.

Ok, I get it. The average poster here hates liberals and is glad somebody that talks shitty finally got a chance, but please tell why you want this person in charge of things she can't even talk about? All I hear is whining about how much y'all hate liberals and smart people. Any substance to your Palin lovefest?? No?You guys do realize that since John McCain isn't red enough for half the republican party, and there was such a split in the Dems between Obama/Clinton, that the political handlers decided a red meat chick from way up north was the only strategic way to swing enough votes to win. You do understand her selection was nothing more than a political strategy, right? Is it still too soon to admit it? Will they revoke your red state card if you come clean? Sarah Palin is just like the people where I come from, that's why I moved away from there. I want leaders who are smarter and more capable than I am, not feel good homages to the commoner while the boys in the backrooms divide up the country among the "real Americans" as the country goes to shit.

I made a point, when young, to pick up the TV / California accent so as to best get by / get the least grief... but everyone (Dick and I included) has an accent.

I'm sure to someone in the UK Dick's accent sounds provincial... Personally, I find his slow speech grating and hard to listen too. I don't always like what Palin says, but I don't find her mode of speech as irritating as his...